In Thomas Pynchon's *Vineland* we already experienced this
feeling - of being in a post-historical time-space where nothing
happens anymore, nothing but an absurd hanging on along the past's
edge. A daughter (Prayrie) reconstructs an indecipherable past
from the fragments and rags left behind by her parents' generation.
That past is indecipherable because Zoyd and Frenesi (i.e. Prayrie's
father and mother) can no longer provide clues for the puzzle:
Zoyd makes a living out of simulating accidents, and is also on
welfare for partial insanity. As to Frenesi, she keeps embarking
on troublesome enterprises.

And yet *Vineland* is still a contemporary novel - I mean,
it hasn't been written by someone of the "post-generation",
because Pynchon, the greatest unknown man of our times, (although
we don't know precisely how old he is) most likely belongs to
the psychedelic broom. Pynchon has paved the way for Luther Blissett's
faceless name, and yet he is still settled in the century of historical
tragedy. Now, however, we are witnessing the release of the following
generations' early greater narratives. Mind you, I mean: 'following'
modern history and modern Humanism. At the end of the Kosovo
war springtime, that springtime during which students hadn't occupied
any Italian, French or German university, I read two extraordinary
novels: Michel Houellebecq *Les Particules elementaires* and Luther
Blissett's *Q*. These two books have just one feature in common:
they are written by people looking in from the outside (indeed,
from two utterly different outsides). The viewpoint I am talking
about is the space-time where action has become uncontrollable
and meaningless. Yet, the two landscapes could not be more different:
while Houellebecq's book is desperate and sad, Luther Blissett's
is desperate and happy. [...] *Q* and *Les Particules elementaires*
are the first novels whose post-historicality and post-identitarianism
are utterly conscious, though identity is dissolved in two opposite
ways: Houellebecq's dis-identity replaces individuals (names and
surnames, personal and collective stories) with the aggregations
and disgregations of biological becoming and decompositon. Such
dis-identity is degrading, the basic particles move about looking
for the individual's consistency, something that's irremediably
gone. On the contrary, LB's dis-identity is awareness of the
language's becoming, mutation of roles, becoming community, bodies
meeting up with one another, desertion and going adrift.

- "Now I turn around when people call me Gustav... I've
got used to a name which is not more 'mine' than any other".

*Q* is a book that comes after history... And see how these
dis-identitary pirates skillfully master history, with the contempt
of those who took a look through the idealistic fabric - through
civilization, religion and politics. Idealism is the condiment
of mankind's cannibalistic meal. It is the pepper and salt of
both history's violence on bodies and men's violence on women.
First of all, I must say that *Q* is written with a wonderful
masterly skill. The recombination of time is not simply a series
of flashbacks - it is a fold-in of temporal strata whose double,
subjective sequence is composed of Gert tom Kloster's passionate
look and Q's police-like and political one. Although the book
is very lenghty and thick (more than six hundred pages), the plot
flows quick and involving.
Secondly, I must say that *Q* is impressively rich from a philosophical,
ethical and political point of view. The ground stalked by all
these precariously named characters is that of the frenzy and
madness produced by an historical change in the infosphere, the
invention and spreading of a new information technology, that
is the press, the possibility of reproducing texts. The word
is no longer "volatile", it acquires an unprecedented
power thanks to the invention of flyers, flugblatten.
Peasants and craftsmen receive undisputably striking messages.
The word becomes matter, and history. All the madness, fanaticism
and wicked violence of modern class war, and also its devotion
and generosity, spring out from messages whose path is no longer
mouth->ears - rather, it is hand-to-hand, and their readers
grasp them as the Word, the Scriptures, the Truth. If the Bible
is printed, then any printed text is bible. The Scriptures spread
themselves around, they are no longer exclusive property of the
Power - everybody can spread the word, and turn the word into
flesh There is a logical shift in the relationship between the
infosphere and the mind. The printed word gets into circulation
is social milieux that are accustomed to oral tradition - those
people interpret the text in mythological, strongly picturesque
ways. Communitarian mythology arises from the ashes of oral culture
and overlaps with the critique of the Power, turning the critique
into a new dogmatism and revolt into a totalitarian power. This
overlap is the origin of all the delusions that have tormented
the proletarian community for almost five centuries. The radical
critique of the world turns into the mythology of the Kingdom,
autonomy turns into dialectics, the insurgents become victims,
pleasure-loving bodies turn into meat in the slaughterhouse of
history.
Luther Blissett's novel depicts the tragedy of the proletarian
community during the last five centuries, the modern age. The
novel is set in early 16th century Germany, a few years after
the beginning of protestant Reformation, precisely during the
Peasant War. Through the plot we can see the stories of our 1960's
and 1970's - first the exhilarating creation of communities by
the force of our discours, by the shared pleasures of flesh and
mind, then a tragic armed confrontation, fanatical violence in
the name of ideals, and finally police repression. I don't know
if some of the numberless reviewers noticed that *Q* is the first
Italian novel (and even the first European one, as far as I know)
handling the experiences of libertarian and autonomous movements,
and then of "terrorism", laying the stress on the latter's
inextricable tangle of totalitarian fanaticism and state provocation.
It is from this point of view that *Q* is a desperate novel.
There's no hope in history, there's no hope in dialectics. When
the movement arising from everyday life designates itself as an
avenging judge, when utopia takes the place of life, here comes
the spectre of identity, and the rebellious body is imprisoned
by sacrificial idealism. Then, the boss recognizes the rebel's
face, and hits it hard. In Luther Blissett's novel there's no
hope, and yet there can be happines. It is an Epicurean novel,
nay, a Spinozist novel. Happiness is in the pleasure of meeting
each other, in the contact, the caress, in words playing games
with no pretence to Truth. Eloi, the
Antwerp roof-maker who organizes an egalitarian community based
on the refusal of armed violence, is the prototype of a whole
generation of insurgents who did not want to seize power, nor
did they want victory or revenge. Those people are usually sucked
into the pit of assassin history, owing to their fanatic and sex-repressed
brothers, who found parties, organize insurrections, provoke massacres
and create totalitarian states.
"Ursula is something I won't feel anymore, Melancholy, engraved
on my flesh and soul. I look at her, she says: 'You are not like
Hoffmann, you do not expect anything. You have a hopeless defeat
in your eyes, but you are not tormented by resignation - you are
tormented by death. You already chose life, once.'" (*Q*,
p. 191) Luther Blissett's heroes can be happy, precisely because
they don't expect anything, they don't invest their desiring energy
in history, the future, a dogmatic truth that is to be realized
by sacrificing the flesh. Happiness is only in the present, the
flesh, the pleasures of contact, the concrete community of bodies
touching each other and minds exchanging signals. As far as I
know, *Q* is the greatest lesson of irony against fanaticism,
ever.

- I heard that *Q* caused a sensation in the circles of hardcore
multiple name bearers. "What?", someone said, "Luther
Blissett signing a contract with a major publishing house? Is
this the end of the multiple name and dis-identity?".

On the contrary, that was the final coup de theatre, before
the planned melting into thin air. First of all, there can be
no "hard core" of faithful Blissetts, because LB is
a prank pulled on faith. Secondly, if identity stillness must
be radically contradicted, why not make happen a thing like that?
Now, the same mechanism that caused a thousand changes in the
relationship name-subject is causing the umpteenth and final change:
those who have pig-headedly avoided the "Author" mythologies
and logics for such a long time, have the freedom to act as "authors",
the best authors there are. Hats off for comrade Luther Blissett,
whoever s/he is. Luther Blissett emerges as the most important
thing happened in 1990's Italian culture. He displayed a brilliant
critique of politics - critique of literature - critique of critique,
while managing to produce the best politics, the best literature,
the best critique. This is pure life, pleasure of the struggle,
pleasure of language, pleasure of a community that flows and keeps
changing instead of fossilizing. And now? What is Luther Blissett
going to do after the end of their Five Year Plan? [*] Hic Rodus
hic salta? What will you do, fellas? What shall we all do? I
greet you. Hopelessly. Happily.

Bologna, June 1999

[*] This only concerns the older milieux of the Italian Luther
Blissett Project. Of course, everybody will still be free to adopt
the name.